


Back to Madoka

by BlackBirdAolen



Series: Ask.fm Requests | The Daily Request Collection [9]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: F/F, Loop, Multi, Relief, Repetition, Sacrifice, Same Month, Timelines, kiss, relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 22:53:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5067970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBirdAolen/pseuds/BlackBirdAolen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homura has gone on and on through the time loop, without faltering. And finally, she is rewarded, in an unexpected and sweet way.</p><p>(Ask.fm request I found irresistably cute.)</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://ask.fm/BlackBirdAolen">Got a fanfic idea for me?</a><br/><a href="http://cheroshseiphar.deviantart.com/">My deviantART - full of original fiction.</a><br/><a href="http://blackbirdaolen.tumblr.com/">Snippets and ramblings on my tumblr.</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to Madoka

283 times.

That was how often Homura had gone through the time loop of that single month, trying her hardest to find a way to rescue Madoka from becoming a magical girl, and with that fall to despair. She couldn’t believe the number of times she had gone back to try it all over again, but there she was. She was still breathing, still fighting, and still not giving up on hope.

But it had become more difficult with each and every time. Especially after she had found ways to become very close with each single one of the group of magical girls that, inevitably, would always find together in Mitakihara. She had dated Mami, Kyouko, Sayaka and even Madoka, and every single one of those encounters had left a deep sorrow in her whenever she had to rewind the clock. It would also mean that the girls would forget about her, that the timeline changed, and that something would potentially blindside her every time.

Yet she still kept on fighting. Homura had included Mami, Sayaka and Kyouko into her quest to try and save them all from such a horrible fate. Over and over again, she had gone through the loop, and yet she hadn’t found the perfect solution yet. To make matters more difficult, it could always happen that one, two or all of the girls had already entered a contract with Kyuubey, and that would put a stop to her plan prematurely. But she still thought about it all of the time. How could she get the others out of the contract? How could she ensure that they would be safe? And what would her life look like once she found a way to break this endless cycle of despair?

After nearly 24 years of living through the same chain of events over and over and over again, Homura had understood one thing. She had tried to make herself cold towards the world, to block out all those feelings flooding her. It was senseless, however, if she wanted to reach the girls. If she wanted to be credible and to really make a change, she had to shed the cold behaviour and return to a more light-hearted self. That had been an exercise of surprising difficulty, because she couldn’t fully return to it. She was caught in a middle state, in a more quiet one than even before her contract with Kyuubey. She couldn’t be all cold, but not all open either.

Homura sat by herself on a park bench, sighing to herself and rubbing her aching shoulders and neck. She had fought against the Sweets Witch once more, this time being able to prevent Mami from being killed even before she could form a contract. This was one of the rare timelines where Kyuubey had not yet formed a contract with either of the girls, so there were chances that she would succeed. But she was only one week in, and she already felt smashed by all the things that had happened.

She meticulously had disposed of several bodies of Kyuubey, but she knew that it was a senseless task in the long run. She had to devise a plan how she could sneak the girls past all of this to the end of the month. For Homura, the defeat of Walpurgis was the marking event that would bring about the fulfillment of her wish. If she managed to defeat Walpurgis, without any of the girls turned into magical girls, it would be at least part of a success for her. But she had to still navigate four more perilous weeks, and that would be no easy feat.

There was one thing which worried her, though. She had observed the four girls closely, and had realized that, for some reason, memories had started to leak between the different timelines. For her, it was all in a chain of ever-repeating days, but on the whole, it was more like it happened all at once in different parallel universes. So of course, there might be some interference between the different timelines, but she had never fathomed it would come like this. The timelines were all intertwined, with the girls as their focal points, but it shouldn’t happen that they would interfere. It just didn’t seem quite right. However, Kyuubey seemed oblivious to that too. She still put an emphasis on “seemed”. With the Incubator, it was almost impossible to tell what he did and didn’t know.

“Homura!” Homura flinched when someone called out to her, and only when she really looked up, she realized that it had been Mami, who came towards her with a smile. She was accompanied by the other three girls, and Homura couldn’t help but smile and blush at the same time. She had dear and at times intimate memories of the girls, and it definitely tended to influence her actions towards the girls. It was hard to keep it all straight. It had come even so far that Homura needed to write down and memorize what she had said and done with each of the girls in what timeline, so it wouldn’t all get muddled with every additional repetition of the same month.

Mami then surprised her by pulling her into a tight hug. Homura was even more confused when the other three girls piled on them, with Madoka nuzzling her neck and smiling happily, as though she had worried for a long time, but not shown it openly. Heat creeped into Homura’s face, and she tried desperately to remember if she had let anything slip through that would have given away that she knew each of them rather well. Of course, there were differing details between the timelines, but all in all, it always had been the same four girls she had worried about.

“W-What’s the matter?” Homura was genuinely lost as to what could have happened that they all embraced her like that. For just a moment, she feared that they had entered contracts and had wanted to surprise her with that, but then, to her astonishment and relief, she noticed that none of the four showed any signs of bearing a soul gem. “You’re all awfully cheery.”

“No worries.” Madoka was the one speaking, and she did so in her so characteristically soft and soothing voice, whenever she needed to comfort someone. “We just remembered.”

“Remembered?” Homura was even more confused now. There was nothing to remember in this particular timeline, right? And the interferences from other timelines couldn’t exactly be called memories either. She was utterly lost, until the hug broke, and she was just being held tenderly by Madoka, who seemed to be more radiant than ever.

“We remembered what you did for us, over and over again.” Homura flinched in surprise, or even near shock, when she heard that. The interferences had gone this far? This was worrying, if not catastrophic. They shouldn’t remember a thing, and yet… “We remembered how often you got hurt for us, how often you cried, and still pulled yourself together and tried again.”

“How?” She couldn’t ask anything else. Her mind was in too much of an uproar to really comprehend. Everything from the past 283 months blended together, into a single darkness, and yet so spotted with radiant stars.

“We don’t know how either.” Mami gently ran her fingers through Homura’s hair, smiling lightly at her. “We just remembered, and knew it couldn’t be dreams. They were too vivid to be dreams, and too soft to be visions of the future.”

Homura felt tears welling up in her eyes. That would mean that the girls even remembered how often they themselves had gotten hurt as magical girls, and how often they had suffered the consequences of entering the contracts with Kyuubey. She began sniffling against Madoka’s shoulder, then finally broke down crying. It had been a felt eternity since she had cried the last time, since she had allowed her sorrow to really break through. It was not overwhelming her, however. She felt just endlessly relieved. But still, she worried for the other girls. They shouldn’t remember. They shouldn’t be burdened like this.

“It’s okay, Homura-chan.” Sayaka nuzzled her left cheek, Kyouko patted her head, and Mami gently ran her hand along Homura’s back. “It’s okay, really. We know how hard you fought. How we fought with and against you, how you struggled to make us understand. It’s alright now, Homura.”

Homura couldn’t calm down for the longest time, but the girls were endlessly patient with her. She couldn’t believe that this was really happening. She wanted to believe that this was all a dream, but it was real enough. She didn’t and didn’t wake up from this supposed dream, which was like an unbearably bright ray of hope in her long, desperate struggle to save them from Kyuubey, and from Walpurgis all the same. She finally had a sense that what she did wasn’t futile any longer. That was more than she could have asked for.

Madoka finally pulled her into her arms, while the others stood back a little. Homura looked up at Madoka, still with tears in her eyes. Madoka. Her Madoka. Safe and sound in her arms, and aware of what they had done for one another. The kiss that followed never could have been any sweeter.

 

 


End file.
